vbdasc

Now this is something! You can browse the DOS VM from outside? How exactly can it be done? Please!

Unfortunately, VIA are known to produce some quirky and troublesome AGP implementations. Try forcing AGP 2x mode in the BIOS setup. Also try to disable AGP fast writes and sideband addressing. P.S. You have installed the VIA chipset drivers, of course? P.P.S. Playing with the "AGP aperture size" might help too (especially for VIA chipset motherboards).

7600GT AGP works properly for me with v82.69 drivers. My MoBo is Epox 9NDA3J, with the NF3 Ultra chipset, the Windows is version 98SE. As my system suffers from the shutdown trouble, it is obviously not related to the PCI-e bus The only patches/updates I installed were DirectX 9.0c and the Unofficial Service Pack 2.1a. Try them.

My experience with the v82.69 drivers is that they work, but the Shutdown and Restart to MS-DOS Mode options don't work for me anymore, and the driver is to be blamed. In fact, all Eck said is fully valid for my case too. The only difference is that my videocard is 7600GT.

IMHO in your case those A, B, C, D, H interrupts would correspond to the free IRQs - 3,5,7,10 and 11. I have no idea in what order, though. Also, I don't think you will need to disable the USBs. Just make sure to not use the second PCI slot for the soundcard - the SATA controller could create some really nasty resource conflicts. P.S. Perhaps buying a new soundcard supporting W98 is still possible - Audigy2ZS/4 for example, or even something like Chaintech AV-710.

It's true; the situation is not that desperate, though The 64-bit CPUs from AMD and Intel (except the Itaniums) are still compatible with the 32-bit and 16-bit instructions - in theory, they still can run even MS-DOS 1.0 or Windows 3.0. And it hardly makes sense buying an used 32-bit CPU when the new Celerons/Semprons cost under 50USD and are fully backward-compatible with all legacy software. P.S. Oops, it seems VIA still sells pure 32-bit CPUs, and maybe Transmeta does too

But where one can buy a 32-bit CPU these days? IMHO all new CPUs are 64-bit I have a 7600GT running well, but it is an AGP one. While shutdown problem is definitely annoying, it is still possible to live with it. As there is a workaround for the problem with graphics in VESA using DOS games, it is not fatal too. I'm not sure about the PCI-e / Win98 compatibility, though. BTW, I think you can still get an AGP mobo and play safe, for example an Asrock AM2NF3.

No, but I have installed the unofficial service pack 2.1a. AFAIK, it comes with newer versions of all files that the shutdown supplement updates. My bios setup doesn't contain such an option; however, the resource table that the bios shows at POST time indicates the VGA card does get an IRQ (it's an AWARD bios). P.S. My shutdown problem is exactly the same as the one described here.

Well, I have tested my configuration further and all I can say is just: It works! Great work, really Yes, I encountered some problems, but all are minor and can be fixed with some tweaking. I have a dual boot system with Windows XP, so in Windows 98 the games I played with were older ones, mostly. Again, some notes: 1. The "slowness" in UT2003 I mentioned before is probably only my subjective feeling. The benchmarks that UT2003 provides show only slightly lower FPS than in XP. Or may be it's related to the inferior CPU/memory management in Windows 98 in comparison with Windows XP? I don't know. This game is known to be rather CPU/memory hungry, after all. But I'll repeat: it is still fully playable. The "slowness" can be noticed only after one has just played the same game under Windows XP. 2. In 2D all is fine. But only if a 32bit color mode is used. In the 1024x768 16bit mode I noticed some weirdness: windows suddenly changing color, funny looking icons and tooltips and etc. The 2D/DirectDraw games I played look fine, even the 16bit mode ones like Heroes of Might&Magic 2 and 3 3. The 3D games I played look fine too. However, I played with Direct3D 2/3/5 games mostly. The UT2003 was the newest game I played. 4. OpenGL as in Quake3 Arena is fine. 5. DOS games. Here comes some trouble... In pure DOS 7, I haven't seen any problems. But in a Windows 98 DOS box (fullscreen, of course)... some games produced severe graphic glitches. I think these games all use the VESA APIs for accessing the screen. The problems disappear when the "Standard PCI graphic adapter (VGA)" is used. But there may be a better way: there is a free program easily found on the internet, NOLFB. It is a TSR, which disables the advanced VESA modes, forcing the game to use the more basic (an problem-free) ones. Using this program, I was able to play all my DOS games under Windows 98 without any graphic problems.

I installed the 82.69mod drivers on a Windows 98 SE. For now, all seems to work (relatively) fine. The system is: CPU Athlon64 3200+ @2400MHz RAM 1Gb MoBo Epox EP-9NDA3J (NForce3 Ultra, AGP slot, s.939) GPU Geforce 7600GT AGP 256Mb @ 560/1450 Just a few notes: 1. The setup program refuses to install the drivers. It justs tells me I don't have a supported video card and exits. I had to install the drivers manually (by unpacking, then selecting "Have disk" etc.) 2. Pixel shaders 2.0 did not work initially. I used 3dMark03 for testing and the Mother Nature Test and the PS2.0 test (the elephant/rhino one) either locked the computer or produced severe visual anomalies (such as the elephant being black). However, after I installed the last (october 2006) DirectX 9.0c version (was 9.0b before that) and the 2.1a service pack, the problem went away. 3. Yes, I can't shutdown the computer anymore too! 4. In 2D all is fine. The 3D performance looks not quite bad - I was able to reach 12800 in 3dMark03 vs about 13100 in Windows XP SP2 (on the same machine). I played Unreal Tournament for quite some time and didn't have any problems. However, UT2003 seems to me a bit slow. Still playable, just a bit slow. I'll see into it later, maybe I will be able to fix it.